Rotter
by Of Questionable Veracity
Summary: The strangest books end up in the library. Some of them you'd probably be better off not reading. But then again, it's probably nothing to worry about.


A lot of the kids at Hogwarts went home for Christmas, but Lawrence was not among them. This had actually been his choice. His parents were close enough that going home was a possibility but far enough away that it was a logistical act of contortion. To save them trouble this year, he said, he would stay. They weren't best pleased but his reasoning, and his further arguments that they'd make up for a at a later date when it was easier, convinced them putting the lie to their resolve. Though, in their defence, heavily inclement weather towards their neck of the woods made the prospect of a staying in a castle versus trudging and training through miles upon miles of thick snow somewhat of a no-brainer. They said they would see him soon.

Of course, he had largely selfish reasons behind it, albeit academic ones. Since discovering his gift for magic Lawrence had been voracious in his desire to learn everything and anything in his power. While his aptitude when it came to the practical use of magic had so-far been mediocre his best – and his comprehension little better – his sheer enthusiasm for the theory and history of the stuff surprised just about everyone. There was never a point when he admitted that he was tired of hearing about it. In fact, most everyone else got to that point first with him, even the teaching staff.

And so it was that in the depths of winter, with a castle largely empty of anyone else, that Lawrence came to be in the library finding books. Swaddled up against the cold – giant stone buildings, magical or not, were not the best insulated – he moved between the stacks trying to find anything interesting sounding or, more pressingly, anything that might help him with this History of Magic coursework. This coursework was a pressing concern, as while learning was one thing putting down or expressing what he had learnt was quite another, and was something he hadn't come to grips with yet.

Peering up and down the row upon row of spines Lawrence espied a group that seemed to be just up his alley. They were, however, on the highest possible shelf. Even after finding and dragging over a helpful set of steps (the ever-useful rolling-ladders apparently didn't reach this point, he found) they were still barely at the tips of his fingers. But Lawrence was not to be denied.

Reaching up to grab all three volumes of 'Imposters and Fraudsters: A History and Analysis of Muggles Purporting to be Magical in the Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries' – the books which had most caught his interest at first glance - Lawrence had his hands full when the book that had somehow slipped behind the shelf came tumbling down on top of him. Hardly Keeper material in the first place, he still had reflexes enough to at least duck his head before the book hit it, thumping heavily into his skull. Cursing, he dropped the three he was actually carrying and they in turn fell on his toes. This resulted in more cursing as he swayed back on the steps, hands flying to his head. Only by some miracle of physics that he was unable to explain did he not fall over.

This was not ideal, but once the cursing had died down a little and the shock of having something heavy suddenly land on you had worn off somewhat he grudgingly got around to picking everything up off the floor, the offending book included. Looking at it he had to admit to a tiny tremor of curiosity. It certainly had the look of a book someone would just leave lying forgotten: shabby, worn cover that was turning an alarming shade of green around the edges with numerous, inexplicable stains. Whatever had been written on the outside had long-since been rendered utterly illegible as well, the merest smudges of gilded lettering left, if that. The book was, to put it bluntly, old and in awful condition. But that could only be a good thing in Lawrence's, uh, book.

Cradling them in his arms as he carried them back, Lawrence laid all four back onto the small table he had secured for his studying. He could have picked a bigger one, but those were all back in the more popular sections of the library and Lawrence had little interest in walking back and forth more than was strictly necessary. He settled heavily into the tiny chair and, pushing Imposters and Fraudsters back to make a little room, pulled the mystery book closer and opened it up to see what it was about.

Very quickly he discovered he had no idea, and the further he went through the pages the clearer it became that he wasn't going to have any idea anytime soon. Not only did the odd stains and general rot extend throughout the book – rendering many pages utterly illegible and stunning Lawrence that the thing was still in one piece in the first place – but it was all written in some language that he had never seen before in his life. An odd, angular, jabbing script it made his eyes water if he looked at it too long. There were pictures, too, but those made even less sense, if that was possible. Some seemed rather like anatomical drawings but most were most certainly not and instead just left Lawrence feeling a little...dirty for having looked at them.

He had leafed past a couple of pages before he whipped his hand back; it felt as if the book had bitten him. It wouldn't have been the first time, he noted, but on closer inspection he saw it was just a simple papercut. It didn't make it hurt any less, and having offered up a small sacrifice of blood to gods of comprehension – or whatever – it still hadn't made the book any easier to understand. It remained impenetrable, and now thanks to him a little more stained than it had been before. He closed the book but didn't feel any better about it.

Opening up and reading Fraudsters and Imposters was almost like a literal breath of fresh air. The books were not decaying, their writing was in English – albeit a little bit antiquated – and the pages were not sticky. Still, even as Lawrence took notes, his thoughts kept drifting back to the old book now perched on the very far edge of his table. He didn't even know what the thoughts were, it was just a base awareness of it. He couldn't ignore it. The book was there, and he knew it was there, and he couldn't put that out of his head.

Through sheer force of will he was able to make good use of the three volumes and actually came away from the library having done something of worth. He put the books back as best he could. Fraudsters and Imposters was easy enough to replace given the large gap they left on their shelf of origin, but the weird old book was harder to place. It rankled something in Lawrence to think of just hiding it like it had been before, but he honestly had no idea where else it was supposed to live. He was the only person in the library that day – or at least the only person he could find – and the other thought that rankled was making a fuss to try and find someone. So he rather sheepishly just left on Pince's desk before scurrying off for some dinner.

The food did not look appetizing. It looked good, as it always did, and Lawrence had been almost ravenous earlier, but now that he actually sat down and had something in front of him he realized that he actually feeling a little ill. He'd had the beginnings of a headache soon just after leaving the library but he figured it would have gone away by now. It had not, and had in fact gotten worse. Now it felt like someone was pressing on the back of his eyeballs from inside his head, and the sight and smell of food was not helping. Keeping his eyes down he excused himself.

He got up at least two flights of stairs and along several corridors before he vomited. What little he had managed to put away at breakfast and lunch came up and over the wall and carpet as he collapsed, retching, onto his hands and knees. It came upon him so suddenly that it seemed to come out of nowhere at all. Bracing himself against a wall he heaved and gagged as his body voided itself of more bile and muck than he thought it possible to contain. Even when nothing more was coming up but air it kept going and it wasn't for some minutes that he finally stopped convulsing.

His head felt very thick after that and he stayed on the floor for some time. Lawrence considered his options. The clever thing to do, probably, would be to go and seek medical attention of some kind. He had never heard of any getting food poisoning from the food here, though that wasn't the only option. He tried to think of what might have caused it, but the more he thought about it the more he reflected on how, whatever it was, was now gone. He didn't want to make a fuss, and he was fine now. He had made a mess though, and that was no good. He wasn't sure how best to clean it up so did as much as he could before quickly making his retreat back to his bed. He would sleep it off, that would work. He would feel better in the morning.

Sleep came fairly easily, though it was early. At least it would give him a head start tomorrow he thought. More time to work and learn and grow, the best kind of day he thought, grinning. Head sinking into the pillow he drifted off.

Lawrence found himself standing at the very edge of a large garden. He couldn't remember how he might have gotten there, but somehow it just didn't seem important. All he knew was that behind him lay the rest of the world. It was big and vast and empty and cold. There was nothing for him out there. But in the garden he would be safe. In the garden he would be comfortable and looked after, he would be cosy and warm. This he knew. And so he walked into the garden.

Every step he took in the garden made him feel better. Or if not better, at least happier, more care free. The air was thick and heavy, the smells damp and musty, but that just made him even cosier. It was like being in a blanket, really. Insects buzzed here and there or scrambled up and down tree-trunks but that was just normal. That sort of thing happened in a garden. There was nothing unusual about that.

But then he noticed something about the trunks themselves. They were leaking. No, not leaking. They were bleeding. It was fuzzy, but the more he looked the more obvious it became. The trees didn't have bark, but flesh. It stretched taut and split in places, something that wasn't sap running down the side in rivulets. It wasn't blood either, he could see that. The insects – flies, Lawrence saw, all flies – crowded around the rips and tears in a great buzzing mass, clambering over one another in their efforts to lap up whatever was leaking. Lawrence moved closer.

It was pus, he saw. Thick, brown-yellow pus oozing from the very core of the tree. It pumped out rhythmically, as though subject to a pulse, and it was only then that Lawrence saw the trunk expanding and contracting. As if it was breathing.

A fly landed on his hand and he looked down, slowly. The fly was cleaning its eyes, rubbing its legs together and scraping them over itself. He kept looking at it. A bloated thing, fatter by far than any fly had a right to be. He saw a strange marking on its back. Like three circles, divided up by three lines. It was hard to see because it was so small and the heavy, muggy air was making his head swim, but it was obvious all the same.

He was so busy staring at the fly's rear end he failed to notice that the fly had stopped cleaning itself was instead now looking up at him. When he did notice, he found it very difficult to look away. Even as other flies began to land on him – in twos and threes and tens and twenties – he just couldn't look away. The buzzing was getting louder. He could hear the pus gurgling out of the tree. He could hear the trees groaning, sighing. The buzzing was so loud. The flies were in his ears, in his nose, in his mouth, but he couldn't look away. They were in his eyes now, and even as everything turned to black he still couldn't look away.

Lawrence woke up feeling hoarse, his throat dry and his lips chapped. He licked them with a fuzzy tongue but that didn't help in the slightest. With great effort he swung his aching legs out of bed and with even greater effort actually stood up. Every part of him throbbed, and it was only when he reached to steady himself on one of the posts of his bed that he found his finger was the most painful part of all, pulling his hand back almost as soon as he had grasped it.

The cut looked bad. It hadn't so much clotted as crusted over and the colour was all off. Lawrence had never seen anything like it before, not that he had had a life full of cuts before, but something about this one just seemed a little worrying to him. But not too worrying, he realized. Looking at it, he tried to care, but he could only muster a slight wisp of concern. It would probably be okay, he thought; it would probably work itself out. Just live with it, he thought. It very easily left his mind as he went to go and get some water.

He didn't have any company either on his way to the bathroom or when he actually got there. It being the holidays and all the place was half-deserted as it was, and he had apparently woken up fairly early even for the few people he might have expected to encounter. Not that he wanted to meet anyone. Cupping his hands he scooped up some water and sucked it down with eagerness, cool refreshment much appreciated. He then splashed some onto his face, which was even better. Gripping the basin he sagged for a moment as he collected himself before glancing up at the mirror. Something about his face peering back at him made him pause.

Were his eyes getting closer together? How would he know? Why would he even worry about that? He stared at himself but that didn't tell him anything he couldn't already see. All he knew was that he looked tired. And pale. And sweaty. Or was that just the water from when he'd splashed his face? He couldn't tell. He did feel a little hot, certainly. His eyes, however close or far apart they were meant to be, were ringed by dark skin and heavily bloodshot, which was a worrying sign in and of itself.

And yet, somehow, he found it very difficult to care. The thought of having to drag himself all the way to the infirmary was just too much. Besides, he didn't want to make a fuss. It was probably nothing. He probably wasn't sick at all. He coughed a thick wad of phlegm into the sink and washed it away with a quick burst from the taps. That was normal, that was nothing to worry about.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his arm he slouched back to his bed and put his clothes on for the day, though he couldn't bring himself to imagine what he might have to do in the hours to come. He dimly remembered wanting to go back to the library but now it was hard to muster the enthusiasm. Even putting his clothes on had seemed like an unnecessary amount of effort. Coughing wetly he dabbed his leaking nose with the back of his sleeve and scratched the back of his neck. He scratched it again a moment later. The skin felt a little rough back there. Probably nothing.

He stood swaying gently in place for a while not really thinking about anything at all until he managed to wrench his brain into some sort of gear and headed off for breakfast, despite not being hungry. He figured he might be by the time he got there, but he wasn't, and his reaction to food hadn't improved by much. A glass of orange juice sat in front of him for about ten minutes as he worked it down by degrees and even that seemed like too much. His neck kept itching and rather more embarrassingly he seemed to be venting gas at a prodigious rate. He hoped no-one would notice, but it was so potent there was no hope of that. He left quickly.

Lawrence didn't have a particular destination in mind when he set off and got lost in short order, not that he noticed. He was too entranced by the bricks. Trailing his fingers across the wall he had suddenly noticed just how many bricks it took to make up this particular corridor. He wondered how many it must be, and before really deciding to do it, he'd started counting them. It didn't matter that he'd started halfway down and that he didn't even have a plan on how to count them or what he was planning on doing with them. He just counted them, one after another. He counted anything else that got in his way as well, keeping a tally in the back of his head. He lost count, but he didn't notice and didn't care. He kept counting anyway.

A fly settled on the back of his hand as he placed his finger onto another brick and he had a moment of clarity. He had been counting for so long it had actually gotten dark outside, and he had managed to work his way to an entirely different part of the castle. His finger hurt, and looking at it he saw why. He had been counting with his cut finger, and the cut had burst open. It was bleeding and leaking, and every brick he had counted was marked by dried blood and worse. Flies followed in his wake, swarming along the walls and buzzing in his ears.

Things did not get better, though Lawrence never for a moment admitted that to himself. His nights were fitful and he couldn't get rest. He dreamt of the garden again and every time he did he went a little deeper into it, but remembering it when he woke up was hard. He felt he was getting closer to something, but he didn't know what. Not that he had much time to remember things when he woke up, since the first thing he did was have a coughing fit. A wet one, The curtains of his four-poster were starting to get unpleasantly stained and worryingly it was getting harder and harder to clean them, even magically. He stopped bothering before too long. He just didn't care.

In fact, he didn't care about just about anything now, and he didn't feel too bad about it. He was sick, this he could admit, so he could allow himself some time to do nothing. That was allowed, that was fine. He shouldn't get help for it though, he should just accept it, and so he did. He typically stayed in bed, slouching out only when hungry and that was getting more infrequent. He sat away from everyone else and everyone else sat away from him. He leaked, he sweated, he smelt. His gut was getting unusually swollen and that rash he had felt on his neck was popping up in other places, along with a sudden outbreak of sores around his joints. Nothing to worry about.

Counting things was fun though. He counted baked beans at breakfast. He counted the lines on the table in the library the one time he plucked up the enthusiasm to go back there. He counted the flies that gathered at the top of his bed. They moved around a lot so it was hard, but that didn't stop him. His eyes were getting fuzzy too which made watching the flies harder. He hadn't bothered looking in a mirror for days now, but felt sure everything was fine. The lump on his forehead would go away.

People avoided Lawrence now. School had started again – he thought, it was hard to remember going to classes, though he was sure he did – and people would cross corridors to avoid him. He kept being told to go the infirmary but somehow he just never got there. He was fine anyway. He felt fine. His nose ran and the skin on his swollen belly was starting to split in places but he felt fine. It was getting harder to hold a quill as the flesh from his fingers seemed to be melting off, but it was fine. Lawrence didn't go to bed anymore, he'd found somewhere damp to sleep and people didn't bother him there. He heard them looking for him sometimes, but he stayed quiet and counted the boils on his legs.

While he was gathering beetles for breakfast one day he caught sight of his reflection and paused. Something seemed off. The lump on his forehead was big. Bigger than he could have thought, in fact. It looked like a horn, pushing through the skin and jutting out a fair way. But that would be mad. As mad as thinking his eyes were starting to merge into one. They were close, yes; almost close enough that the sockets met in the middle. But eyes didn't merge, that was crazy. He crunched down a handful of bugs and thought nothing more of it, trying not to trip himself on the loop of intestines that had just recently been forced out of his gut by the gasses building within.

Maybe he should be worried. He had some doubts. It was so easy just to sink into acceptance about what was happening. It was comfortable to accept it. He thought of the garden in his dreams and how safe he felt there. He wanted to go there, even if he didn't know why. But maybe he should be worried. He couldn't remember but he felt sure he had toes, once, or at least more than three. That his skin hadn't been this colour, hadn't been rotting. There was something inside him, he could feel it, something hard. It wasn't like the lumps and bumps and nodules and other bits that were growing on him. This was something else. This was something coming from somewhere far off, something coming out of him.

It pressed up against the inside of his body, painfully. He thrashed and the flesh tore. Looking down with his one good eye he saw metal and without thinking he grasped it. Wrapping slimy, taloned fingers around it he pulled it out. Foot after foot of pitted, rusting iron came out from inside him, more than could fit. But that didn't matter. The blade wept foulness and stunk of death. Flies crawled out of holes on its surface, wiping their eyes and staring at him before crawling back again. Lawrence stood up.

He was blessed. His grandfather had blessed him. Blessings beyond counting, though he could count them if he tried. He was accepted, he was safe, he was perfect now. He knew what he had to do. He had to let others know about the blessings, had to bless them. Reaching up to pull off the last of his old face Lawrence turned back towards the way to the castle proper. Letting his sword drag behind him he started walking, counting his steps with a gurgling voice and thinking about the garden. His home.


End file.
